Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 284

# Catalog Note

The Sea Marauder; or, Merle Monte's Pledge by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham is a maritime adventure serial set in the Gulf of Mexico region, approximately fifty years prior to its 1883 publication. The narrative opens with a uniformed man bound and gagged to a bayou tree, facing an advancing alligator. An Indian-featured spy paddling a canoe witnesses the capture of "Captain Pierre Dupont, the Sea Marauder" by armed men; intervening to kill the alligator and rescue the captive, the spy ferries the man—whose hair has turned white from shock—to safety. Days later, the rescued man and his rescuer, disguised as Indians, camp near New Orleans awaiting arrival of captured vessels. The protagonist reveals himself as a pirate captain seeking revenge against Midshipman Merle Monte, who captured both him and his schooner, and plots to seize Monte's treasure-laden Gold Ship. The excerpt concludes as Monte's vessels appear on the river.